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  • Akeredolu and APC winning strategy

    Ahead of the governorship primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State, there is a seemingly wild and clustered projection among pundits on its probable outcome with all eyes fixated on who becomes the party’s candidate for the November 16 election. As expected, the political field is littered with aspirants who numbered about 52 as at the last count. This is quite a number but good for democracy and the APC. Irrespective of evaluation as we have so far seen in the strategic positioning of the aspirants, one thing that is obvious is the vibrancy engendered by the process and of course the respective proposals for renewal. Intrinsic in all their propositions is the consensus on the need for change in the basic parameters of running a modern and functional government which can better deliver the goods to the people of Ondo State. Therefore, the quality of the eventual candidate who flies the party’s flag in the election has also been an issue, a candidate who should not only win the election but more importantly change the fortunes of the state in such a dramatic manner that puts to shame the whining Mimiko administration.

    After almost eight years in the saddle, it is obvious that the current government of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has lost steam, only managing to float until the handover date. That’s the truth otherwise Governor Olusegun Mimiko wouldn’t have been whining rather helplessly that “I don’t have money to pay salary”, a failure in leadership that created a six-month salary arrears, a record of pension arrears and sundry debts even as an oil producing state and no matter the state of the national economy. It all boiled down to poor planning and inept leadership. Corruption is an issue, too.

    This is the scenario which could provide a leeway for the APC to take over power from the PDP in Ondo State. Arguably, APC is now the beautiful bride in the state, amassing an incredible following as new members are joining the party and many in the ruling party also decamping to join its fold. Essentially, the realities on the ground advance unassailable grounds for an imminent change in power baton in Ondo State. A major victory for APC seems looming but no one should rest on such oars.

    The above narrative clearly underscores the very high number of aspirants in the APC with the understanding that whoever picks the party’s ticket will most likely win the election and becomes the governor of the state. I want to believe in this thesis also but as much as I do, I also want to point out the inherent danger in such an unwieldy process that could be the party’s undoing. The more the merrier, it said, but this calls for a clear headed approach that evolves out of a discerning evaluation and screening which gives the party a candidate who will deliver on the mandate so given eventually and do the party proud as a promise keeper. The candidate must have an unblemished record of integrity with such a penetrating insight to policy and programmes that can effectively bring about the change mantra of the APC beyond sloganeering. This is the issue. Leadership counts and ideas matter, too.

    It is in this consciousness that we can conveniently situate the candidacy of Chief Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), who was also the candidate of the APC in the last election in the state. Interestingly, the dynamics shaping the politics in the state argue strongly in his favour having regard to his senatorial zone in the northern part of the state and where the preponderance of aspirants are located. Again, this is an issue requiring deft and tact on the part of the APC leadership to resolve by evolving a mechanism which places emphasis on leadership and ability rather than the peculiar political jesting all over as we have seen in the unconscionable in-fighting and open warfare between the political groups and their members on campaigns in the region. This must stop as a necessity otherwise the impression could be created that those involved are power mongers who are only interested in power rather than the party’s burning quest for redemption and consolidation of democracy which consciously put the people first in the scheme of things. As much as we should support open primary as a democratic imperative, I think also that it should be done in a way that protects the basic interest of the party as a robust entity post-primary, one that should be able to go into the election as one whole without division. Thus an effective management of the process is key. This does not mean disenfranchising the aspirants or vitiating the sanctity of the democratic process. It is a call for a sane and orderly conduct that can guarantee internal democracy without jeopardizing the goal of victory at the election proper in November.

    From here, I think the argument above also speaks to the high number of aspirants struggling for relevance from Akeredolu’s home town in Owo. It is a good thing that we have about 10 aspirants from Owo but it is not in their collective political interest which recommends logically that they need to coalesce into one political family by supporting Akeredolu who obviously has a far greater reach and clout in the governorship race? I think arriving at a consensus among the disparate political circles in Owo is in their best interest which can also provide a formidable front during the primary. The recourse to unbridled political animosity and jealousy is uncalled for. While competition is good in any social formation, it becomes a matter of rationality in some specific exigent circumstances as we now have in Ondo State. Thus reason should prevail.

    Even as a party, the APC should benefit handsomely from Akeredolu’s leadership if he eventually wins the primary and becomes the candidate. On most counts, analysts are convinced that his aspiration is clearly premised on the public good and the conviction on such position is his antecedents as a democrat of a rare hue and legal titan with activist orientation which have largely been deployed to the service of the poor over the years. His widespread contacts locally and abroad will certainly prove handy in lifting the state to a new level of possibilities. Things are hard, we now need a thinker who can mitigate the dicey situation and lift the people out of hopelessness. Akeredolu comes out as a relentless advocate of change who strongly believes in the philosophy of politics of substance. Arguably, APC really needs Akeredolu’s intellectual enterprise and adroit leadership pragmatism in navigating through the myriad of socio-economic challenges facing the state, working with others in popularizing his beautiful ideas for regeneration in Ondo State.

     

    • Olagbuji is of the Ondo Concerned Professionals.

  • The CEO that NPA needs

    Perhaps, the trajectory of HadizaBala Usman, in the last few years, is akin to that of Okonkwo, the lead character of Chinua Achebe’s ‘’Things Fall Apart.’’  At 40, through solid personal achievements, the lady has soared to great heights within a short time. However, unlike Okonkwo, HajiyaHadiza is a blue blood, she also has name recognition and the lady is from the upper middle class family of intellectuals. In Nigeria, these attributes open doors for people, making most of them laid back and indolent in typical Aje Butter fashion. With Hadiza, the story is different as ‘struggle’ has been her way of life from the cradle.

    Significantly, the mustard seed was sown in Zaria, at the Samaru main Campus of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), where she was born, nurtured and groomed. Specifically, HajiyaHadiza’s character was forged in the furnace of idealism, when ABU was the hot-bed of radical scholarship. More so, Dr YusufuBala Usman, her late father, was the leading light of the leftist ideology. At that time, ABU boasted of the best and the brightest minds in the intellectual world. From primary to secondary school, up to her first degree, Hadiza had lived and schooled in that environment, and naturally, the constant search for the truth, which is the essence of scholarship, has rubbed off on her over the years.

    So, with a degree in Business Administration, Hadiza  went to the United Kingdom, where she bagged a Master’s degree  at  the University of Leeds in 2009. However, instead of securing a cozy job in the banking or oil and gas sectors, she opted to be a researcher at the Centre for Democratic Development and Research Training (CEDDERT).  Thereafter, she went to the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), where she met with Malam Nasir El Rufai, the then Director General of the agency.

    In 2003, when El Rufai became Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Hadiza joined him as Special Assistant on Project Implementation. Afterwards, she   plunged into full time activism and politics.

    Significantly, HajiyaHadiza and a few patriots, across geo-political and religious divides, formed the Good Governance Group, a policy think tank that was committed to accountability. Severally, the group had x-rayed policy issues, critiqued state and federal budgets as well as highlighted abuse of office. Hadiza, according to reports, was the engine room of the group as she and her colleagues, on several platforms, have held governments to account and criticized sundry infractions.

    Thereafter, she crossed over to politics and, along with like minds, teamed up with General Muhammadu Buhari to form the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Specifically, she contested for the House of Representatives, especially in Musawa/Matazu Federal Constituency. However, the PDP candidate defeated her in a controversial manner. But instead of contesting his victory, she moved on to other party engagements. In particular, HajiyaHadiza and other CPC stalwarts, including El Rufai, midwifed the historic merger with Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) as well as a rump of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

    Ironically, in spite of all these, HajiyaHadiza had remained largely in the shadows but for the Chibok school girls’ saga, where female students of Government Secondary School Chibok in Borno State, were kidnapped. Hadiza, Ms Oby Ezekwesili, former Minister of Education and other activists had  teamed up to form the Bring Back Our Girls(BBOG) campaign, an advocacy group that raised awareness on the plight of the Chibok girls. The activists, at that time, risked their lives and limbs to protest the inertia of the Jonathan administration over the abduction. Regularly, the group held vigils, addressed the press and staged peaceful demonstrations around Unity Fountain Abuja, sometimes with tear gas canisters flying over their heads.

    Significantly, after President Goodluck Jonathan’s defeat, Hadiza became the Chief of Staff of Governor El Rufai, where she took charge of the goings on of Sir Kashim Ibrahim House, as Kaduna Government House is referred to. In that position, she re-organised the seat of power, drew up an elaborate organogram and insisted that political appointees deliver on their assigned schedules. Particularly, she led by example and instead of threatening and throwing her weight around, Hajiya rebuked erring staff in private. In fact, the former Chief of Staff, according to reports, was the voice of restraint within El Rufai’s kitchen cabinet. Always, Hadiza resorted to the force of reason, instead of forcing people to be reasonable. In my opinion, this attribute will help Hadiza in her new national assignment. However, even before   settling down,   several projectiles are being fired at her.

    Specifically, critics have picked holes on her appointment and in summary; their arguments can be reduced into three points. First, they argued that Hadiza lacks the experience to head NPA and that her Curriculum Vitae is not rich enough for the appointment. Second, her appointment is seen in some quarters as another example of the president’s nepotism as both Hadiza and Buhari are from Katsina State. Third, some critics prefer ‘’an insider’’ who knows NPA through and through, instead of a ‘neophyte’ who will spend years learning on the job.

    In short, some ‘’pundits’’ have dismissed her as a square peg in a round hole, on account of her age, academic qualification and experience.

    First and foremost, Section 2(a) and (c) of the constitution, the supreme law of the land, states that any Nigerian who is 40 years of age and has been educated up to at least school certificate level or its equivalent, can aspire to be president of Nigeria. At 40, with two degrees in her kitty, HajiyaHadiza is qualified to be president, let alone the Managing Director of NPA. As for nepotism, the accusation is not supported by facts because it was RotimiAmaechi, the Minister of Transport, that nominated Hadiza to the president for the post. The Minister is from Rivers and not Katsina State. In making the nomination, Amaechi was guided by the need for geographical spread in his ministry. Right now, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Nigerian Railway Corporation(NRC) are both headed by southerners and NPA, Ameachi had argued, should go to the north for equitable distribution of appointments. In any case, Alhaji Habib Abdullahi, the immediate past MD is from the north, so were his predecessors, Alhaji Sanusi Ado Bayero and Architect AminuDabo. Similarly, those who favour an insider for the top NPA job miss the point. Right now, the agency needs someone with fresh ideas,  who can think outside the box and not an MD   who has spent donkey years  doing the same thing and expecting  different results.

    Above all, NPA needs a steady pair of hands and someone with integrity, in order to reposition the six major ports under it. In this regard, Hadiza has earned her spurs as an Administrative Secretary of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation, a member of APC Strategy Committee and the Director of Kaduna State APC Campaign Council. As Achebe noted in Things Fall Apart,   ‘when a child washes his hands, he can eat with a king’. Clearly, HajiyaHadiza’s clean hands are needed to turn NPA around.

    Bayero, writes from Kaduna State.

     

  • Ayade: Leading from the front

    Ayade: Leading from the front

    Events in Calabar in the past couple of weeksare enough to break even the most dogged in any leadership position. Many a leader would have baulked or cringed. But that is not what makes a good leader. A good leader neither wilts nor cowers.

    Good leaders exude courage, confidence and commitment. That is the mien and fabric with which they are woven.

    Governor Ben Ayadeemblematizes these qualities a-plenty. With a near zero revenue allocation from the federation account, measly internally generated revenue (IGR), Ayade has proved more than handful for all the challenges that have made dreary headlines of many states across the country.

    These days, placards-carrying protestations have become a common narrative in several states and a feeding frenzy for many of the media.

    But with courage, the governor has stoically soldiered on, ensuring that workers get their honest reward for their labour. He has astounded many with this feat, oftentimes leading to questions as “where is he getting the money from to pay salaries and still invest in infrastructure?”

    And with commitment also, the one-time senator turned governor has had to go under the trenches working alongside everyone else to ensure the state capital, Calabar retains its status as the cleanest in the country. There can never be any greater motivation than this, being committed to his work and to his promise.

    Assuming office last year as the fifth civilian governor of the state, Ayade came with a clear vision and an exciting idea of where he was going and what he aims to accomplish as a strategic planner.

    With a private sector background, his herald was one of a manager undergoing a metamorphosis from transactional manager to a transformational leader.

    Out of nothing, he has steadfastly been hewing a pathway to recalibrate the economic landscape of the state by attracting investors with interest in oil and gas, construction, agriculture and education and mining.

    As a patriotic leader, his quality of patriotism means that he is willing to make sacrifice in the interest of common goals.

    This patriotism played out so poignantly recently when he was outside the country and he had had to cut short his investment trip to return home to attend to matters of urgent concern. On his return, he took a radical approach as a leader who leads from the front by hosting a five-hour security meeting with all the service commanders. Shortly after the meeting, he addressed a world press conference, where he outlined a new strategy on how to sustain the peace for which the state has famous for.

    A day before the security meeting, Governor Ayade had received in audience the Consul-General of France along with his entourage which included some officials of Lafarge company, where their talks not only centred on business and the water project by the French government in Obubra and Okpoma, but also on security. The governor gave them a firm assurance that the state government would ensure that French companies and other companies operating in the state do so in safety.

    At that meeting, Governor Ayade revealed for the very first time his plans for the establishment of the Cross River Homeland Security Service, a non-arm bearing and voluntary outfit that will gather intelligence report, and share such with other security agencies.

    Matching words with action, Governor Ayade personally led all the service commanders, and other heads of paramilitary organizations on a ride along the streets and highways of Calabar on an operation code-named, “Operation Show of Force”, to assure residents of Calabar that the government and the security agencies were fully on ground to protect their lives and property, while at the same time warning the criminal elements that they were coming after them in earnest

    The same day, security personnel were dispatched to all the nooks and crannies of Calabar to checkmate the activities of hoodlums and other undesirable elements in the state.

    To ensure that peace and security prevail across the state, Ayade equally had audience with state traditional rulers’ council, warning them that the state government would not hesitate to withdraw the certificates of recognition from any traditional rulers who would not maintain peace in their domain.

    The effort of the governor at ensuring a conducive investment climate has not gone without notice. Recently, the United States, through its outgone ambassador to Nigeria, James F. Entwistle, stated that Cross River State remains a favourite state in Nigeria to do business.

    As part of his effort to ensure efficient waste evacuation and management in Calabar metropolis, the governor recently ordered over 20 evacuation trucks and 200 dumpsters.

    According to him ensuring   safe and clean Calabar is one of the cardinal policies of his administration. Coming at a time of dwindling income of the state, there could not have been a more creative way to address the issue of waste management in the state.

    While some regarded this proactive initiative as one of the core duties of the government, many have since commended Ayade for funding the acquisition of the equipment, despite the challenging economy. They lauded him for his decision to “Buy NaijaTo Grow The Naira” which was considered in the purchase of the evacuation trucks manufactured by Innoson Vehicles Manufacturing, a company wholly owned and operated by Nigerians.

    Prior to the acquisition of the trucks, the governor had undertaken a tour of the various dumpsites in the metropolis and came to the inevitable conclusion that a lot needed to be done in the area of waste evacuation and management.

    Still on security, the governor appealed to the people to henceforth be more interested on what goes on around them, the activities of their neighbours, and the need for parents to monitor very closely their children’s activities and friends. He noted that there was also need to return to the old cherished values and virtues where we were our brothers and sisters’ keepers. They people were also advised to report any suspicious person or persons and movement to the government and the law enforcement agents for prompt intervention, adding that the Commissioner of Police and State Security Adviser’s numbers are in public domain including the numbers from the 11 security sections of Calabar.

    So far, the people are happy with the security measures put in place by the governor, insisting he is very much is on track.

    Indeed, Ayade has demonstrated that he is a leader that can be trusted, and one who leads from the front and from behind.

     

  • Beware broke senators

    Beware broke senators

    The cliché: ‘a hungry man is an angry man’, best describes what happened in the hallowed chambers of the senate last week. The story is that members of the National Assembly are broke! So, somesenatorsreportedly began a subterranean plot to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari.A worse case of infirmity,also making the rounds, is that one of themSenator Dino Melaye, relapsed into a disgraceful confrontation with a female member, Senator OluremiTinubu.

    According to reports, the National Assembly has been starved of pork! Those unconstitutional and unconscionable allocations that they flagrantly pad into their legitimate income.In anger, some members stir conspiracies, as in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. One or two have been named, as leading the conscriptions. Like Cassius, they would say to the other: “The fault, dear Brutus (colleague Senator), is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings…. Now, in the name of all the gods at once, upon what meat doth this our Caesar (PMB) feed that he is grown so great?”

    But, if the claim that they are after the president for turning off the freebies is true, then they should be prepared for a backlash from the public, even though impeachment is a legitimate constitutional process. Turkey, presents a recent scenario. There,thousands of unruly soldiers who turned coup plotters had their guns seized, stripped and paraded like common criminals. Of note, the public rose in support of President RecepTayyipErdogan, despite his dictatorial tendencies, in the exercise of his presidential powers. Perhaps, the senators are only out to harass the president to play ball. Like Cassius said of Caesar: “For we shall shake him, or worse days endure.”

    Between the president and our senators, many would excitedly back the president, even with his worst hubris. For while the president may be afflicted with the disease of nepotism and tribalism, the senators are in conceit with the most perniciousgreed. Yet, it is important that the president realises that many of his ardent supporters are now agonising over his poor economic credentials and his regional pride over the constitution andsustainable national politics, particularly in choosing key appointees.

    For somesupporters, the PMB they staked their reputation to promote, has become what Brutus feared of Caesar: “It is a common proof, thatlowliness is young ambition’s ladder, whereto the climber-upwards turn his face, but when he once attains the upmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend”.Unless PMB changes his tact, which he should if he wishes to be a successful president, many who supported his ascent into the presidency, now rue that unflinching support for the politically-lowly PMB, back then in 2015.

    For this writer, PMB has done reasonably well in taming the worst disease afflicting our country –corrupt enrichment as public service.For that alone, we must all tolerate PMB, even as we expect the legislators to use their positions to nudge him into conformity with all that is best forour country. But PMB must not like Caesar, brush aside, the warning: “Beware the ides of broke senators”. For while many like Marcus Brutus were not originally among the plotters, the grave uncertainties of a King-Caesar, got Brutus and many others into the plot, which eventually consumed Caesar and the plotters.

    The antidote to a perilous time for both our senators and our president lies in obedience to the rule of law. While the senators should be content with their legitimate income, the president must exercise his powers in accordance with the provisions of our constitution and other extant laws of our country. The senators who live above their legitimate means must cease to do so if they wish to survive Buharinomics. This column like many others have been railing that our legislators live in contempt of the constitution.

    Particularly with regards to their remuneration, the senators and their colleagues have annually abused their power over appropriation of revenue, in sections 81 and 162 of the 1999 constitution, to corner for themselves a huge chunk of the national budget, on the wicked and malicious argument that the N120 to N150 billion they unlawful appropriate every year, is a mere fraction of the nation’s budget. If the legislators rue the glaring public opprobrium against them, they can mend their ways, as the abuse of their appropriation powers over public revenue, is at the heart of the public discontentment against them.

    In case some of them don’t have the time to read the constitution, paragraph 32(d) of the Third schedule of the 1999 constitution, clearly provides: “The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission shall have power: to determine the remuneration appropriate for political office holders, including the president, vice president, governors, deputy governors, ministers, commissioners, special advisers, legislators and the holders of offices mentioned in section 84 and 124 of this constitution”. So, the self-serving appropriations they practice are unconstitutional.

    The admonition of Allagoa Ag. CJ, Rivers State (as he then was), in Amakiri vs Iwowari (1974) 1 RSLR5, is apt for our political office holders: “Rule of law in practical terms means no person however highly placed is beyond the law and it implies due consideration for others and a true fear of God…. The fruits reaped by respect for the Rule of Law is stability, efficient administration and economic progress and satisfaction amongst the citizens. Persons in authority and government functionaries should by their good example command and not demand respect”.

    If the senators are up in arms because of a few weeks delay in the payment of their emoluments, they should pause to ask themselves how those owed over five month’s salary, in about 27 states have been surviving. As I have argued on this column, what our country urgently needs is a state of economic emergency. Unfortunately, despite the outcry that life is increasingly becoming short and nasty for many, it is clear that our leaders are more concerned with politics, than the welfare of the general public.

    To compound matters, the Niger Delta Avengers and their affiliates are threatening to make life even more miserable for the entire country. While PMB has rightly appealed to the agitators to give peace a chance, there are no clear signs that the federal government has appropriately engaged the region in finding a lasting solution to the crisis. The result of the prevarication is the deepening of the economic crisis, with all the possible consequences for our fragile country.

    Despite thepresidency’s misgivings on restructuring of our country, it is increasingly becoming obviously that this government would soon be forced to set up another diversionary constitutional conference to halt a descent into anarchy. Should the so called Niger Delta Republic be declared by August, as a group has threatened, will our country not be on its way to massive disruptions across the country? With millions of unemployed young people roaming about, are our leaders not apprehensive that an army of potential recruits exist for those hell-bent on bringing our country to its knees? Those in charge of our common destiny must wake-up, before it is too late.

     

  • The Power Crisis

    Power, Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Fashola, SAN, is by general acclaim one tough cookie of a performer in public office. Beyond whatever might be the political trade-off by President Muhammadu Buhari in naming him to the Federal cabinet, Fashola’s exploits as two-term Governor of Lagos State recommended him highly for his present portfolio, which merges under the present dispensation three intensive ministries in past dispensations. When he was assigned the job after a six-month wait by Nigerians on the President to name his ministers, not a few conceded readily that Fashola’s track record qualified him for the posting. But the power component of his present portfolio may yet be the ultimate test of his public office career, and from indications, he would be lucky if it does not turn out to be his waterloo.

    The minister, early last week, was in Benin where he encountered residents protesting persistent power failure, which was compounded by the sheer affront of a recent hike in electricity tariff by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). The Benin protesters, like many Nigerians, apparently couldn’t fathom the logic in asking consumers to pay more for public power supply that was anything but ever supplied. Incidentally, the minister had been strident in saying there was no alternative to the tariff hike, which a Federal High Court in Lagos however voided last Wednesday as “procedurally ultra vires, irrational, irregular and illegal.”The protesters also bemoaned the haemorrhage being inflicted on the economy – perhaps more devastatingly, cottage economy – by unrelieved blackout from the public grid, saying nearly all businesses in Benin had been forced to close shop.

    Fashola, who was in the Edo capital for a stakeholder meeting organised by the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (DisCo), blamed the poor supply of power on shortage of gas to run turbines in the state. Speaking after a tour of facilities, the minister said there were four turbines, of which only onewas working.  He was reported as telling the protesters: “I am just coming from inspecting the power assets, that was the first thing I went to do. We have four turbines there, but only one is working. That is not Benin DisCo’s fault. They just don’t have the gas. There are three idle power plants there, but they don’t have gas.”

    The minister pushed back against protestations about economic haemorrhage, saying: “We have a sense that things are bad in terms of poor supply, but it is not necessarily a hopeless situation. So, when you say every business in Benin has been shut, that is not true.” He waxed tutorial: “Let us understand that power is a product, it has to be manufactured. You need gas in some places, you need coal in some places, and you need solar in some places. It has to be put together. Assuming I am trying to cook a pot of soup and you are angry and you take the pot away, can I still cook? But if you bring water while I am getting the wood, I think we will have a meal.”

    The Benin protesters signpost the gruelling experience of most citizens concerning the power supply situation presently in this country. It is regrettable that the minister suggests they were needlessly sensational and overdramatic aboutthe challenge. People say there is something on Privy Street that perennially hoods the reality on Main Street. That may just be the problem here, because the power situation is hopeless – utterly frustrating and hopeless!

    I am no expert economist, but I know that theeconomics of power supply on Main Street runs roughly along the following lines: the cottage economy is shutting down because with lack of public power supply, operators can scarcely afford alternative power at the prevailing rate of about N200 per litre of diesel, or between N140 and N145 for gasoline. Medium and big-time operators deploy alternative power to remain in business, but that translates to huge shavings off their profit marginswhere there is profit left. Their instinctive recourse is to pass the burden to end-consumers, thereby fuelling rouge inflation. The operators have also tended to roll back their overheads byshedding existing workforces; and they freeze the wages of workers remainingdespite the inflationary trend that they, by downloading the extra costs to consumers,largely accounted for. But because incomes are capped, there is a limit to which consumers can absorb higher costs or do without non-essential items; and so, it devolves back to operators to forfeit some expected returns.

    Nigerians invariably need power supply to run their lives, but that power is scarcely supplied from the public grid. And it is cold comfort that the challenge derived fromlack of gas – or indeed coal, or hydro resource – to run the turbines. This point is all the more warranted because the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) has lately mounted a media campaign deflecting responsibility for the persistent blackout by citing low power generation owing to lack of gas. ANED effectively submits that it could not distribute to Nigerians what it had not been fed from the generation front end. But the bottom line is that citizens need power, and it is not their responsibility to provide gas, coal or hydro resource for the turbines. That is what the government was voted in to do. And if there are hindrances on the way, it is the government’s responsibility to speedily address such.

    It is notorious, of course, that the challenge of militancy in the Niger Delta deals mortal blows on existing infrastructure in this country, accounting for the shortage of gas. The government needs to decisively confront this challenge. It is high time it tackled downthe militants by arms, if it really can, or face up to the urgent imperative of dialogue – with attendant indignities. Pendency between those options has become a life-threatening luxury.

    Cameron…Fantastically Gone!

    Nearly three months earlier than he had envisaged, David Cameron bowed out last Wednesday as British Prime Minister. At 49 years, he is said to be the youngest in his country’s history to exit the top job. He is succeeded by 59-year-old Theresa May – the second woman ever to become Britain’s premier, the first being the late Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher who held sway from 1979 to 1990.

    Cameron first came to office as Prime Minister in 2010. His tenure was renewed in the 2015 general election in Great Britain and was projected to run till another election holds in 2020. But he resigned following the June 23 referendum in which British voters chose to end the country’s 43-year membership of the European Union (EU), against the run of his campaign that the country remain in the bloc. It was anticipated that the process of selecting a new Conservative leader and, in effect, Prime Minister would run a competitive hog lasting beyond nine weeks. But the process was abridged last week, following a shock withdrawal by May’s challenger,Andrea Leadsom, clearing the way for her coronation. Cameron realised there was no good reason for him to remain in office till October, as he initially projected, and he swiftly gave way to the successor.

    Perhaps the most iconic documentation of that transition was a picture of the former premier in weathered clothing, by himself hauling cartons of his personal effects from the official residence into a waiting truck. Not a few wondered if it could ever happen in Nigeria, indeed Africa, that an outgoing leader to be so enthusiastically hands-on. The sad truth is: not only is the typical Nigerian politician unlikely to be so hands-on in leaving power, he would likely challenge the Brexit vote at the tribunal and run the appellate process as long as it could be made to last. We simply need to be learning from other climes.

  • Tenure policy and future of Nigeria’s civil service

    Recently, the news about the tenure policy in the federal civil service silently burst into the public sphere, and rather silently seems to have fizzled out like most significant issues that concern the progress of the Nigerian state. I however consider the issue one of rather immense significance, especially to the reform and transformation of the civil service in Nigeria, and so deserving of protracted debate and discussion that affects policy about how the civil service can perform and hence fulfil its mandate as a cornerstone of national development. My concern with this issue is, of course, not far-fetched. I have been a civil servant all my life; and my brief revolved around the reform of the civil service system in a way that backstopped Nigeria’s burgeoning democratic governance. For me, therefore, what is at issue is not the appropriateness of removing or retaining the tenure policy, but rather situating it within the overall well-being and performance capacity of the civil service.

    There are so many things that are wrong with the Nigerian state. And the civil service system is one of the focal point of the inability to transit into a developmental state with the capacity to empower its citizens in terms of a democratic service delivery that concretises democratic dividends. And the civil service system in Nigeria has been the focus of more than six decades of active reforms that targets almost every dimension of its operational modalities, from wages to staffing. Yet, these reforms have had ambivalent effect on the progress of the system. Let us cite one cogent instance. By the time the massive purge of the civil service by the Murtala/Obasanjo regime was completed in 1975, the system had been so eroded that civil service professionalism was effectively compromised, and the critical performance that would capacitate the system was effectively lost. It was therefore most appropriate that the Phillips Report, which undergirded the Civil Service Reform of 1988, would essentially be concerned with restoring and enhancing professionalism and performance. Unfortunately, this report politicised rather than professionalised the civil service elite corp. The wastage which ensued from this politicisation was the result of making permanent secretaries political appointees who mark time on a position for as long as the lifetime of the government which appointed them, and effectively ensured the erosion of cooperation and motivation.

    When the tenure policy was established under the Yar’Adua government, one positive purpose it served was as a check against systemic demotivation to career progression officers who have always been in the Federal Service. No one civil servant would have the opportunity of sitting at the helms of affair in a ministry until s/he attained to managerial level through rigorous pipelining and tested career progression. The reversal of this policy simply demonstrates the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which politics oftentimes trump policy and reform in Nigeria. I doubt if anyone would be able to seriously fault its significance as a plank in any effort to take the civil service, and especially its senior level cadre, to the next level in terms of productivity and performance.

    Let us put the discourse in a new light. The tenure policy is not a stand-alone administrative policy; it does not exist or cease to exist for its own sake. On the contrary, its effectiveness or lack of it, in global administrative best practices, it tied to its specific function in the performance record of the civil service. All across the globe, from USA and the UK to the Netherlands and France, the tenure policy issue goes beyond the career progression of the civil servants; it has often been tied to the urgency of achieving a result-oriented civil service that is lean, economical, effective and efficient. Countries which have confronted the tenure issue have done so, therefore, within the context of a larger smart practice which performance management imperative actualized through the deployment of numerous human resources toolkits like flexible employment policies and performance accountability systems that draw any civil service into the service mandate of producing tangible results.

    When Nigeria lost the golden opportunity presented by the Udoji Report of 1974, the Nigerian civil service system has been in a race against time to constitute the civil service into a policy implementation hub that efficiently delivers development outcomes through the effective circumvention of the policy execution trap which choke visions, development plans and policy outcomes. Since 1974, in other words, the civil service system has failed to achieve a shift from a system which manages input processes to one which supervises output outcomes. Mr. Oronsaye cannot be blamed for his valiant effort at laying the foundation of the tenure policy. The real issue is why successive heads of services have failed to deepen the administrative implications of that policy as a performance game changer which not only tenure civil servants but ask for price of the tenure in terms of accountability for results and outcomes within the context of rigorous and continuous annual assessment metrics. With the politicisation of the issue, and its eventual reversal, it becomes clear that we have on our hand a case of the system protecting its own top management in a manner that precludes accountability and results.

    The tenure policy must be placed within the larger issue of cost of governance and the overbloatedness of the civil service in Nigeria. The reality in the civil service today is not only the existence of many deadwoods and ghost workers who shoot up the overheads of the service. This reality is complicated by the fact that government pay through its nose for the outsourced services of policy consultants and analysts. There is also the obscene surplus of special/personal assistants and special advisers as well as the frameworks of over-reliance on technical assistance from development agencies. All these have become the unfortunate dynamics by which the civil service cope with its own deficiencies, compromised by skills deficits, nepotism, lack of any re-professionalisation programmes that bring the civil servants up to date on current administrative skills, and wrongheaded industrial actions.

    The civil service in Nigeria has a tough choice to make between remaining a lumbering bureaucratic contraption that circumvents Nigeria’s democratic governance and a lean, efficient and professional system girded around by values and procedures that compel performance and results. This is the dilemma that the adoption or reversal of the tenure policy places on us. While the objective of the civil service, according to the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR) is fast moving, intelligent, professional, information-rich, flexible, adaptable and entrepreneurial world class civil service that is performance-focused, accountable and capable of creating the policy climate that will instigate a new productivity paradigm in the national economy, there are obviously many options that could take Nigeria to this objective. One of these numerous options is the concept of the Senior Executive Service (SES). This refers to a small, professional, non-political career civil service that would not only enjoy career protection, but would also enjoy a compensation package that serves as adequate incentive, especially in the face of private sector recruitment.

    But the task of the SES goes beyond being retained in the public service. Specifically, it constitutes the nucleus of reflective innovation, leadership core and skills repository of the civil service. It is around the SES that the reform of the civil service can be achieved. Those recruited into this top echelon will be distinguished by a different pay package which is inevitably tied to a performance contract scheme. Thus, the SES is more about administrative leadership, performance outcomes and accountability than about security of tenure. More significantly, the SES option ensures that the civil service system is constantly kept in check within the purview of the administrative requirements of the knowledge society and its reform imperatives. The Senior Executive Service becomes critical in its mandate to increase the intelligence quotient of the civil service at the strategic, tactical and operational levels.

    According to the French ecclesiastic, Cardinal de Retz, “Nothing indicates the soundness of a man’s judgment so much as knowing how to choose between two disadvantages.” The present administration is faced with the weight of public opinions on the rightness of removing the tenure policy or not. The way out, I submit, is to insert the retention of the tenure policy within a larger framework that not only allows the civil service to press its top management into performance management, but also gives the civil service system a firmer footing within the comprehensive change agenda of the government. Tenure by itself makes no sense except within the context of how it facilitates the performance of the system. Or fails to do so.

  • Dogara’s quest to deepen the capital market

    Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, made history on Friday, July 8, when he became the first ever presiding officer of the National Assembly to visit the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and to sound the closing gong to signal the end of the trading on its floor.

    But while his visit was a new development, it is well known that since his emergence as the Speaker last year, Dogara has been very active in championing calls for the revival and deepening of Nigeria’s capital market.

    The NSE is not in its best of times. The market is yet to recover from the global financial meltdown of 2008 which resulted in over N10 trillion being lost by hapless Nigerian investors. Sadly, efforts to investigate and bring all those responsible for the crash to book for their actions or inactions have been frustrated by powerful forces, leading many Nigerians, especially the middle class, to stay away from the NSE after losing their savings and pensions to insider abuses and other infractions by some operators.

    A 2010report by the National Bureau for Statistics puts over 100 million Nigerians below the poverty line. With the dwindling revenue from oil resulting in non-payment of salaries by 27 out of 36 states, and almost 500 local government councils, more Nigerians are being daily plunged into poverty.

    This calls for desperate and urgent measures by political institutions to diversify the economy, create wealth, and reduce income inequality. There is therefore the urgent need to deepen the capital market and make it attractive to the ordinary Nigerian to make living.

    Not new to the happenings in the stock market, having served in the committee of the House that investigated the events that led to the crash of the market, Dogara has continuously advocated for measures that will deepen the market and return investors’ confidence. It is his conviction that democracy, the best system of government ever to be invented by mankind, can only function effectively and deliver on its promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when wealth is created and deliberately allowed to trickle down to the ordinary people. He believes strongly that this can be achieved through the capital market.

    For him, a situation where a large chunk of the nation’s resources or capital is heavily concentrated in the hands of few chief executive officers, CEOs,  would further widen the inequality gap, eliminate the middle class and plunge more people into abject poverty, thereby posing serious threat to the sustenance and survival of democracy. He has made it known in different fora that the skewed distribution of wealth is even more worrisome because the flow of resources from Nigerian citizens to multinational companies operating in the country that makes them rich but unfortunately, these same companies, rather than invest in the NSE and grow the economy of Nigeria, would rather repatriate their profits 100 percent to their own countries without investing a dime back to the system.

    On many occasions, the speaker has made his position on this sad trend clear, sounding it out to all that care to listen that major extra-ordinary measures will have to be taken by the parliament and indeed all political institutions in the country to compel these large multinational companies with interests in oil and gas and telecommunications to get listed on the NSE.

    His argument is simple: foreign telecommunication companies who have been operating in the country since 2001 have not only been declaring huge profits, but are also listed in their countries’ stock exchanges yet have continued to rebuff calls for them to list in the NSE, even though they make most of their profits here.

    Dogara has noted that ironically, it  is only from the patronage they get from Nigerians that they make this huge profit, which explains why even though Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, its capital market ranks third – a very big anomaly.

    No wonder when he sounded the closing gong of the Nigerian bourse on July 8, he said that the parliament would strengthen capital market laws to empower regulators to sanction erring operators. The Speaker told the market operators that his visit underpins the fact that the House pays serious attention to the Nigerian capital market and that for the capital market to take its rightful place, drastic measures must be adopted. He said that having rebuffed calls for them to list on the stock market, it was now time to get the multinational companies to comply by adopting the carrot and stick approach.

    Dogara also charged the capital market regulators on the need to be on top of their responsibilities in order to boost investors’ confidence in the market. To make them more efficient, he suggested that the regulators be empowered to sanction operators that arbitrarily abuse the market so as to regain investors’ confidence. He said it was important to regain investors’ confidence and give them the needed assurance that anyone who perpetuates infractions in the market would be dealt with. According to him, this will also serve as deterrent to others who may want to scam investors in the future.

    Said he: “We need to deepen the market, we need to create and sustain confidence in the market and for confidence to come back, we need to do more. When we start sanctioning, confidence will come back to the market.”

    The speaker received a standing ovation when he told operators on the floor of the NSE that the House would soon pass laws that would compel multinationals, oil and gas companies, telecommunication firms and privatised companies to list on NSE to deepen the market as part of efforts to engender economic prosperity.

    One thing that emerged from the speaker’s visit is that unknown to many, most of the public enterprises that were privatised were actually mandated to list certain percentage of their shares on the NSE as part of the sales and purchase agreement. Regrettably, none of the companies is listed, in contravention of the sales and purchase agreement they signed with the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE).

    Dogara however, assured that the House, through its committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation will investigate these cases of abuse with a view to getting them to stick to the terms of agreement they had with BPE.

    Describing Dogara’s visit as historic, NSE’s council president, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, noted that the House under his leadership had shown concern about the economy and the capital market. While assuring the speaker that market operators will not relent and would do everything to ensure that the market becomes the best in the continent, he said it was very gratifying that Dogara is leading moves to create a conducive environment for the market.

    Of course, the speaker needs the support of all men and women of goodwill to bring his dream of deepening the capital market to fruition. Here, his colleagues and senators alike must, as a matter of necessity and urgency, consider and treat proposed legislations related to this purpose with the seriousness and urgency they deserve and for the President to assent to the bills when they are eventually passed into law.

     

    • Hassan is Special Adviser on Media & Public Affairs to Speaker Dogara.

  • OAU: The lies they told

    Kola Oguntoye’s piece of last Saturday in this paper perches poorly on the wonky rafter of falsity presented as fact. His attempt in the piece entitled, ‘OAU and UNIOSUN – A tale of two visitors’, to project the dissolution of the Prof. Rowland Ndoma Egba-led Governing Council of the Obafemi Awolowo University by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Visitor to the university, as fair and fitting reveals a mind comfortably inured to the false comfort of lies and injustice. In sum, the nondescript writer’s eagerness to pull the wool over the public’s eyes in that piece inspired his inexcusable lack of diligent attention to irrefutable facts as befitting any writer who can confidently call their conscience theirs. Because he swears no fealty to truth and justice, Oguntoye inhabits a satanic universe whose organising principle is this: When the truth is constructive and liberating, skip it.

    Let’s not be delayed by the hollow equivalences Oguntoye draws in his piece between OAU and Osun State University, Osogbo, and their individual Visitors. Rather, come with me to the third paragraph of his piece which contains the execrable distortions of facts concerning the OAU crisis. When his claims are examined on the screen of truth, the hideous untruths that undergird them become exposed. As a member of the claque of unconscionable liars that has emerged since the advent of the OAU impasse, that spinner of falsehood deliberately lied through his teeth thus:

    One, Oguntoye was wrong to claim that the OAU Governing Council arrogated the responsibility of the Joint Council and Senate Selection Board (JCSSB) in the process leading to the appointment of the substantive Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ayobami Salami, on June 6. The position of the JCSSB remains that its duty was never usurped. And this provides a strong rebuttal against the fabrication of people like Oguntoye.

    The falsehood he assertively projected as truth is the invention of the fevered minds of the leaderships of SSANU and NASU which, though do not have any say in the appointment of a VC, have sworn to disparage the process that threw up Prof. Salami. They settled for this abomination because they have caged their hearts with the insupportable belief that the new VC will not pay them the allowances his predecessor, whom he worked with as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academics), owed them. Two of the five shortlisted candidates who lost the office to Prof. Salami see fertile soil in the quixotic quest of the unions and have since been sowing actively therein, aiding the unions in their violent conduct and criminal projection of the lies about the usurpation of the role of the JCSSB.

    Two, Oguntoye pierced the fine heart of truth with the rusty lance of lie when he bayed that ‘the two unions got an injunction from the court, restraining the Governing Council from taking further actions on the appointment of a substantive Vice-Chancellor, pending the final determination of the suit challenging the act’. Like members of the group of liars he dwells in, he too cannot distinguish between notice of a court case and a restraining order. From the admission of many members of the unions, they had thought the High Court at Osogbo, Osun State, would grant their request for a restraining order against the Governing Council. But they were shell-shocked with a notice for the respondent. From that day on, they took laws into their hands and made the school ungovernable, howling that they abandoned their work so as to help the court enforce an injunction that was given in their circumscribed dream world.

    Incredibly, the dissolution of the Governing Council by the Visitor on June 30 was inspired by that falsity, which neither the Minister of Education nor President Buhari bothered to crosscheck. In the advertorial announcing the dismissal of the Prof. Rowland Council, the president ‘ordered’ that the process for the appointment of a new VC be suspended pending the outcome of the court case. But the reality as at the time that ‘order’ was given is that there was no ongoing process to appoint a new VC. There was already a substantive VC who had assumed duty on June 24. The Presidency through the Federal Character Commission had even issued a certificate of clearance to the university Registrar, authorising him to issue a letter of appointment to the person announced by the Governing Council as the VC. The president’s ‘order’ should have been that the unions should go back to their job and await the outcome of their court case. That is the habit of civilised and rational minds.

    Third, it is strange that Oguntoye in his jeremiad ululated that the petition – canonised tissue of lies – of the two misbehaving unions to the president was ‘treated with fairness and equity to the two parties’. The unions concocted lies and passed them off as truths to the president. And the president without any investigation believed their narrative and did exactly what they wanted – dissolution of the Governing Council. But does it mean if anybody claims that Oguntoye is a thief and he is on that score sent to jail without any proof, he will accept that as definition of fairness? No, he will not. But if it is to other persons, he will rhapsodise it as a perfect exemplar of justice and fairness. That is the operating principle in the universe he and the two OAU unions populate. Wrong is right if they are not the ones affected.

    Regardless of the double and warped morality of the likes of Oguntoye, the fact subsists that President Buhari violated the University Autonomy Law 2003 (as amended), which says the Visitor can only dissolve a Governing Council where it is proven (through an investigation of course) that it is corrupt and incompetent. And he cannot appoint a(n) (acting or substantive) VC; neither can he query nor fire a VC. Unless the court invalidates the process that produces him, Prof. Salami remains the substantive VC of OAU. If President Buhari’s abode is with justice, fairness, and respect for the rule of law, he should reconsider his decision on the Governing Council, not tinker with the appointment of the new VC, and shame the claque of irredeemable dissemblers by working for the peace and progress of the university.

    •Alawode writes from OAU, Ile-Ife.

  • Aisha Buhari pledges to boost protection of women’s rights

    Hajia Aisha Buhari, Wife of the President, has pledged to support Nigerian women by providing the necessary advice on all government programmes relating to gender.

    Buhari spoke on Friday in Abuja during the national convention and award ceremony of the National Council of Women’s Societies (NCWS).

    She promised to fight for the protection of the fundamental rights of women and urged members of the NCWS to lead by example.

    According to Buhari, over 80.2million women still lack education and basic health care, while violence against women is on the increase worldwide.

    She stressed that if more was invested in women and girls, it would promote sustainable growth and development in the nation.

    On women representation, she said women constituted more than fifty per cent of Nigerian population and had the capacity to lead as president of the nation.

    “Nigerian women are the major voters and constitute more than fifty per cent of the population and are usually used in times of election after which we are pushed aside

    “ This is the time for us, they are either giving us the 35 per cent we deserve or we should get a woman to lead us.

    “This is time for us to mount pressure on the political parties to give us a percentage, we should put it in writing and sign and we should operate based on what we have signed.’’

    Buhari commended the women on the role they played in the society saying,“ women are catalyst and change agents and they are versatile in their roles as wives, mothers and home makers.’’

    Mrs Aisha Alhassan, the Minister , Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, who spoke, commended the women on their achievements so far.

    Alhassan expressed optimism that the convention would provide useful outcomes that would strengthen women groups and ensure greater women participation in government.

    The minister explained that the mandate of the ministry was to promote women advancement, adding that the ministry would welcome initiatives that would drive the course.

    Mrs Dupe Atoki, Director-General, Consumer Protection Council (CPC), said women were the major consumers in Nigeria, because of the roles they played in the family and society.

    She said:“ The council is coming to sensitise you to know your right, and in that, we have requested Her Excellency, Mrs Aisha Buhari to serve as the Ambassador of Consumer.

    “ She is going to support us because she has the tenacity to mobilise women and she will support us in mobilising women in any state we will be reaching out to.

    “ We want her to use her passion to teach Nigerians to get value for their money

  • Hadiza Bala Usman: From BBOG to NPA

    Hadiza Bala Usman: From BBOG to NPA

    The predicate of the naysayers is this – that it is neither plausible nor possible to be a social activist and subsequently morph into a fit and proper person fit to serve one’s nation at the highest levels at a time our country cries out for obligated service. Arrant nonsense.

    In the alternative, the contention is that being of northern extraction, whatever other qualifications she might possess, she is a fifth columnist and unworthy beneficiary of her accident of birth. That is simplistic, superficial and supine.

    Would it be legitimate to conclude that if Madam Ezekwesili had been appointed to high office to the credit of the Buhari administration, her commendable advocacy for greater robustness in pursuit of the earliest possible return of “our girls” be counted as the premeditations of an agent? I would hope not.

    Ms Usman and others came together to establish the Bring Back our Girls (BBOG) campaign and movement. Those that have raised their voices against her appointment as the Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) appear to contend that Ms Usman participated in and promoted the BBOG, ab initio,with the calculation and premeditation of a latter-day Machiavelli. I am not surprised. The lenses that we deploy when we discern and dissect our political arena deny us the opportunity of perspectives beyond the confines of our primordial persona.

    A long standing member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) before the Chibok girls were abducted, and a proven technocrat who had served at the Bureau of Public Enterprises, at the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory, and as Chief of Staff to the Governor of Kaduna State, Ms Usman has always been seized by a drive to make governance more efficacious. Neither is she a Johnny come lately to social activism, but rather the progeny of a father whose impassioned and forthright pursuit of Pan Africanism and social justice provided the moral underpinning for her public service.

    Rather than berate Ms Usman, we should celebrate her as a paradigm of what a woman (not to speak of a Moslem woman) can be and become in a Nigeria wedded to modernity. In any other society, one would locate and acknowledge the foundations of her social conscience and consciousness, in the academic and intellectual furnace in which her father harboured and nurtured his children.

    Her father, Yusufu Bala Usman, a “leading leftist intellectual” and lecturer in history at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, brought up his children with an acute awareness of the imperative of social justice. They were taught that the glaring inequities in Nigerian society were an ogre to be slain rather than a burden to be borne. Enlightenment comes in all shapes and forms and it came to her with mother’s milk.

    The poisoned well of parochial perspective is the bane of our growth as a nation.  As Theresa May ponders her cabinet with the shortest of notice, she will draw upon persons who have journeyed with her.  This ought not to be contentious; it has more often been beneficial than not. Ms Usman ought to be judged on her competence, her experience and her passion.

    I am yet to come across her competence and suitability systematically challenged or called into question in an evidentiary manner. The objections raised are, in the main, divisive and diversionary. Those that know her speak of her as intelligent, incisive and capable of clarity in thinking and execution. These are the very qualities that a national commending height like the Nigeria Ports Authority cries out for.

    Her experience, at both and federal levels, in pivotal areas of government is well documented and,truth be told, it has been far too long since the NPA had at its helm opportunity and occasion to harness a combination of management experience and proven public duty as this one appointment promises.

    The evident passion of Ms Usman and others in bringing the BBOG into being, and sustaining it in the face of a cynical and deliberately inert government, is eloquent testimony to passion wedded to civic responsibility. Those qualities are so rarely deployed in advancement of the public good that we are inoculated against them, preferring to promote parochial agendas.

    Ms Usman is not of that breed of politician and public servant who sees the public service arena as a place for “playing politics”; rather she comes to public service and office as a calling and opportunity to effect change as part of an agenda for good government.

     The NPA is such a pivotal parastatal in the Federal Ministry of Transportation that its success or otherwise will be one of the bell weathers by which the Buhari administration will be rated. Ms Usman’s institutional experience and breadth of vision means that she comes to this critical area with an appreciation of how the organisation syncs with the broader and more long-term goals of government.

     Those goals and objectives are the metrics by which she and this government will be adjudged.

    •Remi Joseph, a lawyer, resides in Lagos